Space: The Final Caliphate

You lazy, gravity-worshiping hippies may be content to sit around stoned while the MooninitesÂ convert to Islam and threaten the democratic peoples of interstellar space, but Charles Krauthammer will never retreat!

After countless millennia of gazing and dreaming, we finally got off the ground at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Within 66 years, a nanosecond in human history, weâ€™d landed on the moon. Then five more landings, ten more moonwalkers and, in the decades since, nothing.

To be more precise: almost 40 years spent in low Earth orbit studying, well, zero-G nausea and sundry cosmic mysteries. Weâ€™ve done it with the most beautiful, intricate, complicated â€” and ultimately, hopelessly impractical â€” machine ever built by man: the space shuttle. We turned this magnificent bird into a truck for hauling goods and people to a tinkertoy we call the international space station, itself created in a fit of postâ€“Cold War internationalist absentmindedness as a place where people of differing nationality can sing â€œKumbayaâ€ while weightless.

It only took four decades to go from the Wright Flyer to the Spirit of St. Louis to the Enola Gay, and what have we done in the 40 years since Apollo 11? Goddamn it, we haven’t so much as nuked Saturn’s rings! What is wrong with you people?

Americaâ€™s manned space program is in shambles. Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the United States will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. Weâ€™ll be totally grounded. Weâ€™ll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.

The Russians! The Chinese! Case closedâ€¦ or should I say, space closed?!?!

So what, you say? Donâ€™t we have problems here on Earth? Oh, please. Poverty and disease and social ills will always be with us. If weâ€™d waited for them to be rectified before venturing out, weâ€™d still be living in caves.

The unemployed, the sick, the greedy taxpayersâ€¦ what a bunch of a**holes. Don’t they want to be part of something larger than themselves?

All we need is sufficient funding from the hundreds of billions being showered from Washington â€” â€œstimulusâ€ monies that, unlike Eisenhowerâ€™s interstate highway system or Kennedyâ€™s Apollo program, will leave behind not a trace on our country or our consciousness â€” to build Constellation and get us back to Earth orbit and the moon a half-century after the original landing.

Why do it? Itâ€™s not for practicality. We didnâ€™t go to the moon to spin off cooling suits and freeze-dried fruit. Any technological return is a bonus, not a reason. We go for the wonder and glory of it. Or, to put it less grandly, for its immense possibilities. We choose to do such things, said JFK, â€œnot because they are easy, but because they are hard.â€

Yeah, after capturing bin Laden, bringing liberty and justice to the Middle East, stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and elevating America’s global image and security to unprecedented heights, all without breaking the bank, we really need something a little more challenging.

A recurring theme for Neocons like Krauhammer is the need, for the lack of a better term, to create an "American God" that will somehow give the banalities and absurdities of our increasingly arbitrary way of life "meaning." "Sacrifice" in war is a good in and of itself; NASA is mythology in the form of a government program.

America’s manned space program is in shambles. Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the United States will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We’ll be totally grounded. We’ll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.

Gosh, Chuckie, I don't supposed that the private sector could satisfy your lust for space travel (try Googling the name "Rutan" and see what comes up). Oh wait, that would mean money out of your own pocket, requiring you to put it where your (nonense-spewing) mouth is. Besides, your heroes in Rome-on-the-Potomac are too busy siphoning money away from the productive private sector and showering it upon wasteful, destructive entities like GM and Goldman Sachs to make your dreams of space conquest come true. Or maybe, just maybe, the private sector, while perfectly capable of picking up and running with the torch lit by that tax-wasting monstrosity called NASA, finds it UNPROFITABLE to do so, particularly given the hyper-regulatory hell enabled by your fellow neocons inside the Imperial Beltway.

@Liberranter: Who says it's in a shambles? Entcha hearda flyin saucerers? Who needs those rockits! Soon them Russkies is gonna hear a big weeeird whinin' sound as the Discs Of Freedom fly. Frisbee was ALL just a coverup propaganda program to make 'em seem more soft and cuddly when we conquer the HAHAHA WORLD with them.

@Sean: What if the only humans who could possibly survive the coming calamity were in space, and could then come down and recolonize the Mother? Where would your silly head-blowing be THEN, eh?

@Liber: Oh, whups, you weren't Mr. Shambles. You were only quoting him. The saucer thing applies to Burt Rutan too. Unless you think he's in with the freak-boys in the unmarked yooniforms, better drop your stock in his big Roman Candle factory. The best part is, you'll probably all fall for the rubber alien suits…

OK, Sour Kraut, so lets take that enormous defense budget, especially the part where we give huge sums of money to defense companies for useless weapons, and lets go back into outer space with it. That means that Halliburton will have to give up something and so will all those lobbyists, politicians and defense contractors and consultants too. So ante up all you hypocrites and put your money where your big mouths are. And remember, we are doing it for the children (sarcasm added for special effect) and future generations.

Rather taxes be used for the space program than what? He's complaining about the taxes, period, which raise costs for everything. Where does he say anything about spending money on another government program?

Why do we even need a "space program" for anyways? Sweden and Switzerland don't have one. I've been to both countries and for the most part they are cleaner, safer, more prosperous and have happier citizenry.

It's long past time for the US government to get out of the space biz and let private enterprise do it. Hell… the Feds can't do anything right and those they get nearly right costs everyone a fortune. Now if only they'd let go of the post office as well. One can dream.

The world was so happy for that almost unique event USA wa so loved since.
I was one year old and yet the news kept freshly afloat until I realised that Armstong landed on the moon
Now the most hated nation on earth is every where killing maiming starving kids mums and dads.
The moon landing will not fade the hate of the present day.

100 years ago, there was a caliphate, based in Istanbul. Somehow the sky didn't fall. The USA was actually on relatively good terms with the Ottoman Empire, particularly when Lew Wallace was ambassador to the Sublime Porte.

In general the USA enjoyed good relations with the Arab and muslim world until it began its unconditional support of Israel in 1948 (after its foreign policy was hijacked by the Israel lobby). The first country in the world to recognize American independence was Morrocco an Arabic and muslim country.

Actually, "unconditional" US support for Israel only really started after the 1967 war. In the 1948 Israel's main ally was the Soviet Union, while in the '50s and '60s it was France (because Nasser – Israel's main enemy – also supported Algerian freedom fighters).